"No man can concentrate his attention upon evil, or
even upon the idea of evil, and remain unaffected. To be more
against the devil than for God is exceedingly dangerous. Every
crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness
which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort
a part of him." - Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudon"

Something about George W. Bush has bothered me since he swaggered
up from Texas three years ago and - unlike any other presidential
candidate wannabe - called a closed-door meeting of the entire
GOP congressional membership. Appearing literally out of nowhere,
Bush, a nondescript governor who had presided over but two
legislative sessions in his political life, emerged from that
little get-together the Republican candidate for president
in 2000.

Doesn't that strike you as a bit strange? What promises could
this political tyro make to bring an entire party to its knees
- where it remains to this day? Even more perplexing is the
nagging question: What visions of rewards would compel an
entire contingent of national media to collectively kick Bush's
considerable personal baggage from the airplane door on his
campaign flight to the White House?

In the years since that surreal 2000 campaign and uncontested
presidential coup de'etat, the answer hovered just beyond
my peripheral vision - like a dancer practicing in the wings
whose flitting movement mars my enjoyment of the ballet unfolding
on center stage. Little of it made sense. All of it defied
logic. Because, if you look at Bush, or "Dubya," logically,
you see a pampered, impatient, unempathetic manipulative sociopath
with an astonishing sense of his own entitlement. You see
a 56-year-old man who was - by his own admission - a bumbling,
falling-down drunk until the age of 40. This means, if you're
following the logic - and doing the math - that our Dubya
is scarcely older than 16.

So, it's only logical that Dubya didn't make promises to
his party that day on the Hill. He brought promises. Like
a front man for Ray Bradbury's diabolical carnival, Dubya
brought dizzying dream-come-true promises from a tangle of
Iran-Contra zealots and greedy corporate toadies from the
four corners of industrial America. Promises from a fantastical,
well-organized troupe which had been practicing in the wings
for eight long years and was poised to retake center stage
at the first opportunity.

Logic tells us that the arrogant Dubya, bristling with a
reputation of riding shotgun in Poppy's campaigns where his
penchant for discipline and revenge earned him the nickname
"The Enforcer" backed up those promises with threats. Very
real, black-and-white threats from a gang so committed to
gaining control of the world's vast resources and establishing
a new world order that they had an outline of the plan ready
to go in 1992 when Poppy was anticipating re-election.

That manifesto, "Rebuilding
America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For A New
Century," was the brainchild of then defense secretary
Dick Cheney, who is now Dubya's feral vice president. Cheney
drew on the power-mad expertise of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul
Wolfowitz and others such as William Kristol, I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby (Cheney chief of staff) and Dubya's younger brother
Jeb, to flesh out the plan, which they lovingly honed and
perfected throughout the eight years of the Clinton presidency.
They were all there then, and they're all here now, performing
on center stage. All but Cheney, who orchetrates the promulgation
of his grandoise doctrine of world domination from shadowy
undisclosed recesses in the bowels of the nation's capital.

Oh, yes. Threats. Very real indeed. To the victor goes the
spoils. You're either with us or you're against us. Something
wicked this way comes. Good or Evil - your choice.

I'd like to think those Republicans who so blindly embraced
Dubya on that fateful day believed their choice was "Good."
I'd like to, but logic precludes me from going there.
Their political souls must have seemed a small price to pay
for an opportunity to vent their rage at liberals who had
ruled America for too many years - especially the "Dandelion-Wine"
years of Clinton-Gore, wherein undeserving hordes rushed to
clamber aboard the Ship of State. But the choice was far too
easy to be Good (it always is, you know) and - like Dubya
is fond of saying - it has "consequences." All of us are now
struggling to live with those evil consequences. Some of us
will die.

Dubya is the perfect foil for this evil group. The media
tells us he is cute, bold and charming - a compassisonate
conservative and born-again evangelical Christian. What's
not to like? For them at least, Dubbie's a real blow-in-my-ear-and-I'll-follow-you-anywhere
kind of guy. There are those of us, however, who remember
the mindless, casual cruelty of Dubya's twisted snicker as
he mocked a helpless Karla Faye Tucker when, from the grim
death row of Texas, she had begged for her life. We remember
the obvious enjoyment he got from bullying someone too weak
to fight back. Some of us not only remember - we cannot forget.

Every time I see Dubya's face I am reminded that the best
place for evil to hide is right out there in plain sight.
It ventured out at first, with the shredding of treaties abroad
and of regulations at home - taking Karla-Faye baby steps
- causing a slight chill that reverberated noiselessly across
the land. Then, for nine months, emboldened by the nervous
laughter of the media and the silence of the citizenry, it
stomped crazily about - working in the shadows and out of
public view - relentlessly pillaging the treasury, raping
the environment, and trashing the social safety net designed
to rescue those most vulnerable among us.

It was all so illogical. This shouldn't be happening, I
kept telling myself. Why is he here? Why do the people of
this great nation not recognize evil when it is advancing
from all sides - when it is ripping and tearing at the entrails
of the body politick, when the poor, the elderly, the children
are being wounded - all in the name of God? But then it was
too late, for 9-11 was upon us and the walls of our world
came crashing down. We were jerked violently awake only to
stare, transfixed, into the very heart of evil - into a trifecta
of terror, chaos and destruction.

But Dubya - renewed, revived - rose like a phoenix from
the ashes of the innocent, obsessed with righteous revenge.
He launched a crusade to personally rid the world not only
of evildoers, but of the mighty force of evil itself. Dubya
was transformed overnight from a juvenile, crude and vindictive
playground bully to a juvenile, crude and vindictive global
bully. And the people crouched - still crouch - in terror
at his feet-offering their freedoms in return for protection,
wearing their flags like shrouds. Those who dare question
the madness of abandoning the search for 9-11 perps in favor
of "protecting US interests" by disposing of all who disagree
with us are subdued by the war-crazed media which uses White
House talking points like a bullwhip. We are lashed with new,
terrifying threats at a pace that allows no relief from the
horror. None specific. None substantiated. Just terrifying.

It amazes me how easily we accept Dubya's "either-or" logic
of Good versus Evil. We are Good. Those who are against us
are Evil. Therefore, we must destroy Evil before it destroys
us. We scarcely noticed his transformation from a trusting
Child of God to an Agent of God's wrath to an Angel of Death
with the responsibility of punishing every wrongdoer
on the face of the earth. In his own words...

"We will export death and violence to the four corners of
the earth in defense of this great nation."

"An attack on Iraq would be in the highest moral traditions
of our country."

"Saddam Hussein could strike without notice and inflict
massive and sudden horror on America."

"There is no defense against the hidden network of cold-blooded
killers."

"We will liberate the people of Iraq from a cruel and violent
dictator."

"We will show other dictators that the path of aggression
will lead to their own ruin."

"The game is over. The day of freedom is drawing near."

It's only logical that President Franklin D. Roosevelt must
have been prescient in his memorable inaugural address 70
years ago. Else how could he have known we would wake up one
day and realize, too late, that - the only thing we have
to fear is here, Himself....

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and former
US Army Public Information Officer.

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